• FX-8350, 660 SLI, 16GB DDR3 - Anyone have a similar setup?
    10 replies, posted
If so, hows that doing for you? Any problems or instability with SLI? I'm going to be getting some upgrades soon, and I'll likely be getting this and OCing my 8350 to 4.4GHz.
What are you planning on actually buying (with what budget in mind)?
Are you wanting to buy two 660's? Or do you already have one and that is why you want to SLI it? Because it's usually better to just buy one great instead of two good cards.
I needed to upgrade, so I purchased a GA-990FXA-UD3, an OCZ ModXStream Pro 700W, and 2x8GB Kingston HyperX Red 1600MHz. I already have a 660, so I plan on just buying another for SLI. The things I want to buy are the FX-8350, and the [URL="http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-192-Bit-Graphics-02G-P4-2660-KR/dp/B009F7HFRA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1387744161&sr=8-3&keywords=evga+geforce+gtx+660"]additional GTX 660.[/URL] I also plan on getting an H80i to watercool the 8350, and perhaps a 2TB drive. Not sure yet.
The 8350, even when overclocked, isn't a very good gaming CPU. You'd be much better off with an i5. AMD's processors are lacking in single core performance, so they are really good for multithreaded performance. That being said you would have to buy a new motherboard, so since games are mostly GPU bound it might not be worth it. The H80i also isn't that great. If you can, get a two fan slot radiator like the H100i. Single fan radiators perform slightly worse than high end air cooling, so it's really not worth the extra hassle and cost. As for the SLI, it's usually better to get one better graphics card than two good graphics card since: More power required, more heat, some games will flat out break because of SLI and others will give you worse performance with two graphics cards than with one, microstuttering causing a jittery inconsistent framerate, and occasional driver instability. That being said, nothing can match the power of SLI when it's used on an optimized game. If you do decide against SLI for the above reason, anything above a 760/7950 would be a worthy upgrade. I'd recommend the GTX 770 or R9 280X. Keep in mind that a high end card is going to be bottlenecked by the 8350 in the average game.
Yeah, Intel is out of the question, and the 2 660's will be staying. As far as ditching the H80i for the H100i, I can probably do that. My original plan for the H80i was to be mounted in the back of the case since I already have 2 140mm fans pushing outward from the top. With the H100i, could I do something like [URL="http://i.imgur.com/ujUBz6E.png"]this[/URL]? Sorry for the rough drawing.
That would work except flip the two side fans. The top-left intake should be an exhaust and the bottom-right exhaust should be intake for two reasons: A) Heat rises, so exhaust is much better suited to the higher areas in the case. B) Cases are already optimized for this configuration. Dust filters are more likely to appear in places where fans typically provide intake, so reversing this could cause your system to build more dust.
Another thing, how exactly isn't the 8350 a good gaming CPU? It outperforms the i5 3570k in a lot of games and performs similarly in games where the i5 ever so slightly beats it. Plus, it can handle streaming and higher resolutions vastly better than the 3570k. Not only that, but its practically $30 cheaper. Give these links a look. I believe the 8350 is a viable alternative to the Intel i5 3570k without sacrificing much in some areas, and only to gain in others. [URL]http://img.hexus.net/v2/cpu/amd/Piledriver/FX8748/CB.png[/URL] [URL]http://techreport.com/r.x/amd-fx-8350/luxmark-app-radeon.gif[/URL] [URL]http://www.pureoverclock.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/BF3-FPS.jpg[/URL] [URL]http://www.legionhardware.com/images/review/AMD_FX-8350_FX-6300/Gaming_03.png[/URL] [URL]http://cpuwars.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/specviewperf_pro.png[/URL] [URL]http://www.xbitlabs.com/images/cpu/fx-8350-8320-6300-4300/winrar.png[/URL] [editline]ello m8[/editline] If you rate me disagree, kindly do explain why. Thanks.
I'm afraid what your saying there really is the best case scenario. Some games are heavily threaded and thusly the 8350 performs somewhat well; however, the vast majority of games aren't and suffer noticeably. In the absolute worst case scenarios i3's have been seen to beat the 8350. The other things mentioned in this post are also related to multithreaded performance which I've already said is the FX series strong suite. Some benchmarks to prove I'm not talking out of my ass: [url]http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/701?vs=697[/url] (no gaming benchmarks on the 4670k for some reason, so I used the slower 3570k) [url]http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fx-8350-vishera-review,3328-14.html[/url] (this also didn't have the 4670k unfortunately) I don't like using BF4 since it's so unoptimized, but for relativistic comparisons it should yield valid results: [url]http://cdn.overclock.net/c/cc/ccbcb49f_1374264_518773038217357_1060742762__zps45d93a9d.jpeg[/url] [url]http://www.hardwarepal.com/battlefield-4-cpu-gpu-benchmarks/8/[/url] [url]http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd-fx-8350-processor-reviewed/5[/url] [url]http://techreport.com/review/24954/amd-a10-6800k-and-a10-6700-richland-apus-reviewed/6[/url] [url]http://techreport.com/review/24879/intel-core-i7-4770k-and-4950hq-haswell-processors-reviewed/10[/url] Also why are you using the 3570k as an example? The 4670k is out and faster than the 3570k. It's also a $20 price difference, not $30 (granted motherboards are a good bit more expensive). The fact is i5 processors tend to outperform FX series processors in gaming.
Well alright then. I guess they both have areas where they excel. I am alright with the margin between the i5 and the 8350. Thanks for the help.
No problem. Have fun with your new rig.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.